Culture of the Restaurant #5

I was left wondering when someone asked “What is the Culture of your Restaurant”.

Culture? 

I can explain taste, hygiene, service, ambience, location, USP, but ..... culture?

Over the next couple of months, with that word at the back of my mind, it slowly dawned on to me the actual meaning. 

When a customer enters the Restaurant does he feel a positive vibration around him? 

How is the staff behaving. Is there an air of artificiality in their expressions or are they really feeling peaceful within. 

Are the customers all around in a vibrant mood or you feel like anyone will pick up a fight with you any moment. 

.... and how is the right culture ensured? 

Well it’s quite easy. 

They say, ‘ as you sow so shall you reap’. 

As a leader, are you ethical? 

Is the staff salary paid in time? 

The vendor payments? 

The Government taxes? 

The raw material that is used for cooking, is it genuine or are you opting for a cheaper option which can harm the customer’s health? 

If the answer to each and every question above is a big ‘YES’, then rest assured that the culture in your Restaurant is also right. 

No force in this world can dethrone you from your citadel. 

Honesty, humbleness and all such values are going to add on your strength. 

All said and done, 

having the right location, 

providing the top service, Hygiene, service,

a top USP, 

and a beautiful ambience, 

will still not ensure your super success in this field. 

The only anchor is ‘Culture’. 

Be Ethical, be Human!

Experience the best! #4

Man has been bestowed upon with 5 senses, 

Sight

Hearing

Taste

Smell 

Touch. 

The Ambience of the Restaurant plays the most crucial part in your perception about it. If you like it then you feel like coming again and again to enjoy it. 

The Restaurant maybe a closed air-conditioned one or a poolside or further still at the edge of a cliff overlooking a breathtaking view. How the Architect makes use of its inbuilt advantages or a different theme will result into a successful sighted Place. 

When you sit for having food or a get-together what do you hear. Is it some  beautiful music in the background, the chirping of birds, the swaying of the branches of tree or the waves of the sea. Subconsciously it will affect your liking of the place. 

If their is unwanted noise then you will want to get out of the place as soon as possible. 

Taste is the whole purpose of us visiting a food joint. From the soup till the saunf everything has to satisfy our tongue. You order a dish according to your affinity towards sweetness or spicy, sour or bland, with coriander leaves or without it. Whatever your demands, if the dish doesn’t live upto your expectations then you will be thinking twice before revisiting that place. 

To arouse your appetite a deliciously smelling dish has no substitute. Apart from taking care that no stinking of washrooms, uniforms, or other things remain in the Restaurant we can proactively work towards a value additions of aroma like Room freshners, flowers, Agarbattis around the sitting areas. 

We may not realise but the cushion we sit on, the cutlery we use to have food, the floor we walk on, the glass we drink with, do play on our mind. The right combination of all the touch points adds on to our experience inside the Restaurant. 

Of course, one more thing that helps is the marketing of the Restaurant. It captures our imagination even before we enter the Restaurant for satisfying all our 5 senses. Hence, Marketing our USP becomes the crucial part in pulling the crowd towards our place. 

Apart from the 5 senses we also have a sixth sense which attracts us towards a place. 

We had a great time in our college, especially in the college canteens. Do we have the urge of going there even after completing our degree. 

What about our first date. The memory of the place of meet lingers. 

The place where we just go and chill out. Not for food, not for music, not for anything else but just because it makes us feel relaxed and whatever challenges we have in life just vanishes once we sit in that favourite chair of ours inside that particular joint. 

What’s the reason for this...... nothing but the sixth sense! 

All this can be summed up by that wonderful word.... EXPERIENCE! 

The experience inside a Restaurant determines the reason for visiting that place once again. 

The basics - Service, Hygiene and Quality. #2

 

Let’s get to the basics straightaway. 

Imagine the following 3 situations.

Situation 1 : You enter a Restaurant. You are offered a table. The Menu card too is given immediately. You go through the whole Menu but order the dish which you always do without experimenting on a different one. Then you wait..... and wait....... and wait. Due to some reason your dish is not served for the next half hour. 

What is your reaction?

Situation 2 : This time round, everything is ok even the dish you ordered is served within 10 minutes of your ordering. As you are eating, suddenly a small cockroach crops as as an ingredient of your serving! 

Eeeks! 

Situation 3 : You enter a Restaurant, order a dish, it’s served within 10 minutes and you complete eating the dish too... without any surprises. But......

You didn’t enjoy the dish. There was something about it which you didn’t like. You exit dissatisfied. 

The above 3 factors, Service, Hygiene and Quality are of prime importance. Either together, or even two of them should be good, in some cases any one can make your day. 

Your bus is about to leave and you are hungry..... speed of service matters. 

You want to carry something for a patient from the Hospital Canteen. You are ready to wait and also compromise on the quality but Hygiene is of prime importance.

A mouth watering Pani-Pooriwala, putting up his टेला over a road side drainage is not a problem. You are ready to wait in the queue to have that चटपटा Poori on your tongue. 

This proves that sometimes one, most of the times two and preferably all three criteria should be fulfilled for us to come again and again into the Restaurant. 

If Purpose plays an important role in deciding the Location and Size of the Restaurant then Culture determines whether the Restaurant have their basics right. 

The Culture of discipline, perseverance, and dedication will make you a successful Restaurateur. 

Where is your Location? #1

We come into this world not having a choice of to whom we are born (Parents) where we are born (place) or how will we grow physically. 

A Kohli born in a Cricket fanatic nation or a Maradona born in a Football fanatic nation get an added advantage of being short in height as a batsman and a forward respectively. A Stephen Curry (Basketball, USA)  or a Usain Bolt (Runner, Jamaica) are tall. A Basketball player or a Sprinter benefit from being tall. 

It shows that the place of birth and your physique determines the difference between a fairly successful career and a world beater. 

The Location of a Restaurant is the most important part for its success. The location  is decided by the purpose for which it is established. 

A Restaurant can run equally well at a thickly populated area, or in an island where no one resides or even at the top of the Mountain where accessibility itself is an effort. The only condition is our clarity of purpose for which the Restaurant has come into being. 

The next important factor is its size. Again the purpose of the Restaurant plays an important factor. A चाय की टपरी (roadside outlet) can be as viable as the Restaurant having space enough for a 1000 Customers. 

We have to define our demand for the location and space required in advance. Once it is freezed and we finalise on a place there will be no option left. If we fail in this then to make the Project successful either we have to change the purpose of the Restaurant altogether or...... close down. No 3rd way out here! 

5 factors for succeeding in Restaurant business.

“Restaurant business is a high returns giving one, I want to open one”. 

How often do you hear this statement. 

As an owner of a Restaurant I have heard this from a Bank employee to a Software engineer, from a Politician to a Film Star and from a Tendulkar to a Tata. 

The fact is, out of 10 Restaurants which opens, 6 gets closed down in the first year itself while 9 out of the 10 closes down in the first 3 years. 

In India, after Bollywood, Cricket and Politics, a Restaurant owner seems to be the most popular one. He is discussed among people. Hence maybe the attraction towards having our own Restaurant. 

But are the efforts worth it?  

Those who have come to me with some Project or the other have been discouraged, warned, tried to show sense behind the business, the challenges involved, but alas have fallen on deaf ears. Each one comes with an amazing positiveness about succeeding and doing something which no one earlier had done. 

Often the results after that are frightening. 

Some face financial loses, some get into depression loose their confidence while others spoil relationship with their near ones. 

Does this mean that Restaurant business is a gamble? 

Could we establish some laws which can help us guide or give some basic insights into this Profession. 

With the experience of more than 25 years, I have arrived into 5 factors which might eliminate some failure reasons and increase the chances of success. 

You might still fail. But this is an attempt to have at least some anchor points which will enable us to go ahead with our plans. 

Let’s know about it in the series of next 5 blogs. 

If anyone has any inputs on this subject please do share.